Social Hallucinations

Motrin Moms Storm

This commercial caused a lot of controversy amongst moms. No wonder, a good example of lack of understanding for your target group. Pretty basic. I wonder who got an idea to tell moms: "wearing a baby sucks" or "it can hurt being a mom" and expected nothing would happen.

After the storm caused by mad mom began on the Internet, site went down and when it finally got back, some official message appeared, with so called "sincere apology"

You can find the whole story summed on Dave Armano's blog.

And this is response from one of moms, who didn't agree with Motrin's message to moms community.

This an example and good lesson for all brands that it is getting harder and harder for brands to get away with reckless decisions that consumers don't approve. Such powerful consumer's response can be started by anyone...

advertising, social media, Motrin Moms, Motrin

Say Something!

Facebooks seems to become increasingly spammed by companies who assume that people die to become their friends and use / install all the crap they produce. The worse some use Facebook as traditional media, they think the higher they will shout, the more people will hear. There are also others, that choose the way of silence. They don't think they should say/write anything. Silence. Just a link, not a word of explanation. New application from charity organization. That's interesting. Hmm, I wonder whether they thought I would click because I am curious.

Guess what, I clicked hopeing there will be some explanation. Nope. Just like that.

I wonder whether anyone producing this application and then seeding it on Facebook tought for a second - 'why would people on earth download my application?'
Over and over again, I get surprised by the lack of the insight and idea on what motivates people. People always do things driven by needs and motivated by the urge to satisfy those. So for the God's sake, think about it when you plan to communicate with people. Don't expect them to get involved because you want it. Get them involved by nurturing their motivations.

Amen

Nano Blogging

Small and simple is taking its way into our digital lives that are cluttered. First we've got Twitter, so called micro-blogging. We could build network, share with others and tell the world what we were doing - the only limitation was to use 140 characters. Cut the crap is the driver behind micro-blogging. Twitter size, snacking format fits perfectly in our busy and over-connected, overcomplicated digital universe. Nutritious information. Not too many calories but still fulfilling our hunger for being part of human network. Now it's taken a step further by introducing nano blogging. Adocu. Tell the world what you are doing using just one word. It demands cutting the crap even further. No air, no unnecessary words. One word that is defined as streamline of letters, no spaces...

One word concept is pretty good idea if we want to reduce number of incoming information, make them more compact and easy to consume. Neat. But with adocu you can accidentaly choke. There is no limits on the numbers of letters, you can put all sentence, you just avoid spaces. Can adocu cut the crap? Yes and no. It is all in hands of people who use it and the meaning they convey through it. I'll defintely keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile I stick to Twitter.